Elisabeth Hamilton Friermood (1903–1992)

Elisabeth Friermood, née Hamilton, was born in Marion, Indiana, an environment that would later figure in her fiction. She attended Northwestern University and the University of Wisconsin. She was a children’s librarian at the Marion Public Library from 1925 to 1928. That year she married Harold T. Friermood, with whom she had a daughter. She was a children’s librarian for the Dayton Public Library from 1930 to 1942. She wrote about 18 books, mostly fiction for children, about life in the late 1800s in Indiana and other settings in the Midwest. She personified the Wabash River, making it an essential element in the raising of children in The Wabash Knows the Secret (1962), and a nostalgic landmark symbolizing home in Hoosier Heritage (1954).